E.L.S. Deformación

One difficulty in confronting and challenging these surveillance technologies and the accompanying military rhetoric is the extent to which they are already so deeply embedded within society. As they become normalised they become enmeshed within the everyday and, as such, become integrated within the broader ideology. On the one hand, military ideologies and rhetoric become commonplace in the common discourse. On the other hand, these technologies lose much of their attachment to connotations of war and combat as they become commonplace and take on the functions which, at least superficially, seem benign. As Galloway and Thacker state, “the everydayness - this banality of the digital - is precisely what produces the effect of ubiquity, and of

universality” (2007: 10). This banality of the surveillance technologies hinders the development of a counter-discourse to challenge the surveillance practices.

In order to highlight and challenge this notion of banality there first needs to be an exploration of how these technologies become ubiquitous and the

implications of this ubiquity both on a broad societal level but also, importantly, a look at how these technologies become tied up amongst the individual. As these technologies become entwined with the everyday, the everydayness of these practices have implications upon the rhythms of the environment and of the individual.

The ubiquity of surveillance technologies is the result of two concurrent technological developments outlined in William J. Mitchell’s Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (2003). First, wireless networks have enabled the move away from fixed computers/computing devices and the possibility for various devices to communicate amongst each other exchanging information without necessarily relying upon explicit human involvement.

However, individuals become increasingly reliant upon networks and the ability to connect with the emerging imperative to be ‘always on’. Networks become

“faster, more pervasive and more essential” and “the more we depend upon networks, the more tightly and dynamically interwoven our destinies

become” (Mitchell, 2003:9). What Thrift and French refer to as ‘local

intelligence’ emerges where spaces become increasingly “computationally active environments” able to communicate with each other (2002: 315). Second,

technologies have become dramatically smaller and this miniturisation has three significant implications. First, devices, along with the development of wireless networks, become increasingly portable. This allows for “squeezing more functions into smaller packages” and “freeing [devices] from fixed locations” (Mitchell, 2003: 69). Second, as they shrink they become more

discreet and less noticeable. Third, along with this portability and decreased size technologies grow closer to the individual. Mitchell describes these devices as

“electronic parasites” because as they shrink this allows them to be carried at all times as cyborg-esque appendages (like mobile phones), to be built into clothing as with ‘smart threads’, or, at the most extreme, to be literally inserted under the skin as with RFID (2003). Devices that are carried, embedded into clothing, or inserted into the body empower the body with technical capabilities and enable individuals to communicate automatically, electronically and wirelessly with the

environment. As a result of all of this, notions of individuals disappearing into their homes chained to the desktop computer interacting in cyberspace fade as, instead, the computer is unchained and has become easily portable. There is the emergence of ‘electronic nomadicity’ (Mitchell, 2003) where these devices enable individuals to remain connected and involved in the electronic networks regardless of location. Spaces will consist of the physical environment as well as

“sophisticated, well-integrated wireless infrastructure, combined with other networks, and deployed on a global scale” (2003: 57). Instead of fixed notions of uses of space there is a need to consider the implications of the new ‘walking architecture’ which Mitchell describes as the combination of flexible, mobile clothing and fixed infrastructure (2003: 82).

This development outlined by Mitchell above leads to a dramatic shift in

understanding the individual’s relationship to physical space and, following on, impacts upon a conception of everyday rhythms. Everyday life takes place in a complicated merging of physical and virtual space, not an oscillation between two distinct realms for distinct and separate activities but a merging of the two.

While on the one hand, this allows for the development of increasingly

sophisticated and spatially aware surveillance practices this also complicates the function of observation as there still remains a struggle to harness into a

coherent picture the multi-tasking of everyday life. Surveillance technologies often capture one perspective and putting the pieces together, while increasingly accurate is still often clumsy. However, similarly, an observation of everyday rhythms which highlights the restrictive impact of surveillance devices is also complicated.

In Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis the natural biological cyclical rhythms are in contrast to the linear rhythms of everydayness, those aspects imposed upon the individual. In addition, there are media(tised) rhythms which serve to give the illusion of the lived everyday (those aspects related to cyclical rhythms or the extra-ordinary rhythms, the exceptional). Lefebvre outlines the distinction between ‘presence’ and ‘present’ where present (those mediatised aspects)

“simulates presence and introduces simulation (the simulacrum) into social practice” (2004: 47). This is a representation of living and, as well, it “takes care of ideology: it contains it and masks it” (2004:47). This concept is similar to (perhaps even beyond that and parallel to) Debord’s ‘spectacle’ which Debord defines as “the very heart of society’s real unreality”(Debord, 1995:13). It also

“asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere

appearance” (1995: 14). The transformation of everyday life which Mitchell describes can be related to this concept, particularly this blurring of the distinction between ‘presence’ and ‘present’ and how this reinforces an

ideological position which supports pervasive surveillance. Mitchell describes how “the more we depend upon networks, the more tightly and dynamically interwoven our destinies become” (2003: 9). What is not yet clear is how this dependence leads to an obfuscation of reality, of the lived everyday. Particularly as these devices and communication are brought to the level of embedded in the body the intertwined relationship between cyclical and linear rhythms become ever more extreme. As Mitchell points out, “all networks have their particular paces and rhythms” (2003: 11). So, as the networks begin to function ever closer to the body and individuals become connected without disruption, individuals are increasingly driven by the rhythms of the technology (a form of linear rhythms) and further alienated from natural cyclical rhythms. These rhythms

function as simulations and further confuse this distinction between presence and present where, for example, individuals synchronous experiences in

physical space are shared with asynchronous interactions and there is a pressing feeling that physical experiences are not truly lived until documented online (as with the rise of social networking sites). In terms of surveillance, there is a confusion between the lived experience in physical space and the virtual

representation or the remnants of data generated. For example, lived experience becomes subordinate to the information from tracking through GPS and

individuals are increasingly pushed to prioritise the representation over the real.

While Lefebvre would have been thinking of television in his description of the mediatised everyday, in terms of how it blurs the distinction between actually lived experience and mere representations of lived experience as a function of ideology the use of portable devices and the spread of surveillance is a

continuation of this process. In a sense, the desire to produce and consume information which functions as its own spectacle leads individuals to relinquish more control over to networked devices. Embedding everyday life into the networked infrastructure becomes a compulsion. Highlighting the implications for everyday life Mitchell states, “just as boundary, flow, and control systems subdivide my space into specialized, manageable zones, these constructed rhythms partition my time into discrete, identifiable, assignable, sometimes chargeable chunks” (2003: 11). Through participating in the network society the physical everyday increasingly is structured through technological processing.

Being connected in the network, participating in global communication,

contributing to the vast databases of information, and identity affirmation through dataveillance becomes the content of everyday life.

However, this is not a lived everyday in the sense that Lefebvre describes. This is highlighted in his distinction between information and communication with dialogue. The media organises the day into a particular rhythm and tone and renders subjects passive and silent. As such, surveillance technologies and mobile devices can similarly be seen to contribute to a structuring the everyday with a particular rhythm. Surveillance and mobile devices are used to track and organise everyday movements, behaviours and interactions and to reduce them into observable chunks which take on their own rhythm. In the sense that they constrict upon the individual they subject the individual to the rhythm of the devices or of the rhythm of virtual interactions within the network. For example, looking at GPS data uncovers the flows and rhythms of everyday life but the knowledge that these rhythms are observed constricts these rhythms. However, as Lefebvre continues, there is a growth of communication although it is “fluent, instantaneous, banal and superficial ... an insipid flow flooding the

age” (Lefebvre, 2004: 49). Again, Lefebvre’s analogy of the media can be substituted with surveillance systems which flood databases with information and as individuals increasingly incorporate these databases of information into everyday life (for example, using mobile GPS and online user-generated content to find a local restaurant). As a consequence, while dialogue is “a privileged use”

of language, “communication devalues dialogue to the point of its being

forgotten” (2004:49). With modernity there is a preference for information over dialogue where “the informational stocks up on itself, trades itself, sells itself;

that it destroys dialogue” (2004:49).

Lefebvre’s conclusion on this is not entirely clear as he moves on from this point rather abruptly. However, there is a sense that, to Lefebvre, citizenship must be tied to both forms of communication - information and dialogue. There is a need for both and, currently, there is an abundance and obsession with

information but without true dialogue. Interactions (whether with or mediated through devices) are simplistic and limited to the exchange of information. This separation leads to what Debord similarly lays out as the alienation that is produced as a result of the spectacle - the spectacle functions as a one-way form of communication (Debord, 1995). The solution is the creation of situations (Debord) and a focus on and encouragement of the ‘exceptional’ rhythms and

‘immediate’ and ‘lived’ aspects of the everyday (Lefebvre). However, the

seeming banality of what Thrift and French refer to as ‘pocket dictators’ (2004) and the embedded ubiquity and embrace of what are otherwise surveillance technologies complicates this quest for return to presence and dialogue when much of these technologies appear to represent just this. Technologies which have embedded functions of control and surveillance are adapted for more seemingly mundane purposes as the technologies expand. Individuals,

businesses and systems become dependant upon the functions offered and so while they become increasingly ubiquitous the aspects of control and

surveillance upon which they were developed fades and they, instead, appear as rather banal.

RFID (radio frequency identification) is one example of such a technology and an example of Mitchell’s ‘electronic parasites’. These are small microchips that can be embedded into most objects including a wide array of consumer

products, pets and, as Mitchell highlights with his characterization, humans.

They enable products to be identified, located, counted, followed, etc. In this sense the are able to create “an animate environment with agential and communicative powers” (Hayles, 2009: 48). Use of RFID is widespread and seemingly mundane but the technology allows for bizarre imaginings for the future. Mitchell suggests that teeth could be embedded with RFID where “you might make purchases or open hotel room doors by flashing a smile” (Mitchell, 2003: 77). Andrejevic describes how they could transform marketing through the attempts to develop a ‘Portable People Meter’ (PPM) which would combine RFID and GPS into a portable device that would be able to monitor everything that individuals use, watch, listen to and read to create “comprehensive a portrait of individual advertising exposure” with a goal to lead to “a fully monitored media enclosure” (Andrejevic, 2007: 90). RFID is a valuable tool in the move from observing present actions to a focus on anticipating the future through gathering information about behavioural practices in order to

formulate predictions for the future (discussed in detail by Hayles, 2009; Crang and Graham, 2007; Amoore, 2009; Crandall, 2010 and others). Though

emerging from military ideologies and use (Amoore, 2009; Crandall, 2010 and Mitchell, 2003) RFID has become ubiquitous through everyday life as it is embedded within devices, objects and animals (including humans). The surveillance capacity which is opened up with the development and growth of RFID hits at the heart of everyday life as it potentially enables the collection of every movement and every interaction. While on the one hand it appears to enable the capture and prediction of nearly the entirety of everyday life, on the other hand, returning to Andrejevic’s Portable People Meter, this definition of everyday life is intrinsically bound up with consumption. A focus which defines

everyday life through consumption is limited and a project of resistance to this would focus on expanding the disconnect between this measure of everyday life from the lived reality. Through various practices of evasion, détournement and hacking this distinction is further exploited as the inauthenticity of overly relying upon measuring and predicting behaviour through gathering habits through devices such as RFID is challenged. This is explored further in Chapters 5 and 6.

Devices such as RFID are ubiquitous and found in a wide array of products (such as in all products at Walmart (Hayles, 2009)). The banality of this

ubiquity emerges particularly when taking into account the various benign and beneficial purposes for which it is used such as to enable lost pets to be found or to give new interactive functionality to toys (such as with Nabaztag http://

www.nabaztag.com). Gradually, the relationship between devices such as RFID and the majority of other surveillance technologies and the military fades as they become increasingly used and embedded within everyday life. However, the consequence of this is that this sense of invisibility enters critical discourse as well where “the sociotechnical configurations of politics, representation, spatiality and power that tend to be embodied by, and perpetuated through them, tend to be even harder to unearth and analyse” (Graham, 2004: 23). The development of these technologies is wrapped up with military ideology.

However, as the devices become ubiquitous and banal this attachment is not as visible as, instead, the devices become embedded within everyday life now tied up with ideologies of everyday life, safety and consumption. A critique of these devices requires actions which challenge this latter ideology and uncover the relationship to the former as a form of dérive which prioritises focusing on

exposing how these surveillance technologies and infrastructures impact upon everyday life. Following on from this, there are novel opportunities to détourne many of these technologies as an attempt to recapture the devices. These

practices consider how rather than restricting everyday life and infiltrating into cyclical rhythms as they become smaller and closer to the body these devices may instead be used to enhance lived experiences of everyday life.